Thursday, June 5, 2008

In circumstances that we’re facing today, where we’re fundamentally restructuring the company, what has to be our primary focus is are we completing the actions that we deem necessary to get the company competitive for the future. … Whether it’s healthcare of other legacy costs, or structural costs, or excess capacity or making progress on reducing… umm, the level of employees that we don’t need…

Hey, was nobody but a few hardcore business news geeks actually listening to GM Chairman Rick Wagoner a couple of years ago? Because if they were, and if they’d had an ounce of fucking sense about global economics and the market realities of the automotive industry, the recent cuts to GM’s workforce in Ontario would have come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever.

Well first of all, we want to get this early-attrition program completed and try to get the maximum number of employees that are willing to accept that…

When asked about how much the workforce would be cut, here was Wagoner’s unvarnished answer:

We’ve indicated that we’d like to take out about 30,000 manufacturing positions over the ’05 to ’08 period. Last year, in 2005 we took out about 6,000 so that would imply roughly 24,000 to go...

It’s interesting to note some of the attitudes expressed by Wagoner during this interview, particular in response to allegations that GM hasn’t been as innovative in terms of fuel-efficiency as many foreign competitors. His take on the earlier development of the hybrid car by other companies, for example, is instructive: “And why would that be? Have you bought any gas in Japan recently? It’s real expensive — think in terms of $5 per gallon. And the government plays a very proactive role in directing the industry…”